It’s been a big week for compromises and collaboration at the Capitol. First, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and leaders of the GOP-led Senate and Democrat-controlled Assembly on Tuesday announced a deal on workers’ compensation. New York has one of the most expensive workers’-compensation systems in the nation.

The governor and legislative leaders are planning an encore tomorrow morning. This time, they will announce a deal on civil confinement of sex offenders who are still considered dangerous after they have completed their prison terms. Lawmakers have been unable to compromise on their versions of legislation, and former Gov. George Pataki was unable to prod them last year.

The announcement is expected at 10:15 a.m. tomorrow. Stay tuned for more details.

As my colleague Jay Gallagher notes earlier, Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s pick for environmental commissioner has triggered some opposition. But the political reality is that it’s highly unlikely the state Senate would really quash the nomination, Republicans say.

Several Republican senators are saying they will likely fire some hard questions at Grannis during hearings but eventually confirm his appointment.

“ A governor is entitled to his people,” said Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira. He added that he might vote against Grannis in response to some of the sportsmen’s groups in his Southern Tier district.

A Rochester plant was exhibit A today in testimony of the head of the state’s largest business association, who was trying to persuade state lawmakers not to approve nearly $600 million in new charges Gov. Eliot Spitzer wants to impose on them next year. The “loophole closers” (Spitzer’s term) or “tax hikes” (as business leaders call them) would fall particularly heavily on companies like DuPont, state Business Council President Ken Adams told state legislators today. Adams pointed out that DuPont has three factories in New York – two in Buffalo and one in Rochester – that provide a total of close to 900 “high paying jobs.” Adams said Spitzer’s plan would raise taxes DuPont has to pay on its New York operations by “several million dollars.” “That’s not a good way to encourage manufacturing activity in the hard-pressed Western New York economy,” he said. If lawmakers reject the loophole closers, AKA as tax hikes, it’s not clear, of course, where the money to fill the budget hole would come from.

A group of environmental activists plans Thursday to push the Senate to confirm Assemblyman Pete Grannis as the state’s new environmental conservation commissioner. They shouldn’t hold their breath. Gov. Eliot Spitzer picked Grannis, 65, who has represented the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the Assembly for 32 years, last month as Grannis was making a pitch to be the next state comptroller. Grannis withdrew, and Spitzer said the Legislature, which was picking a new comptroller, shouldn’t choose a lawmaker to be the state’s chief fiscal officer. They should pick someone with an extensive financial background instead, he said – one of three recommended by a screening panel. Lawmakers defied him and picked a Long Island Assembly Democrat, Thomas DiNapoli instead. A furious Spitzer blasted the lawmakers for “a lack integrity” and other sins. Of course, the main rap on DiNapoli was his lack of relevant experience and thin management background. So here is Grannis, the longtime chairman of the Assembly Insurance Committee, picked by Spitzer to run an agency with about 3,500 employees – about 1,000 more than work for the comptroller. Plus, senators point out, Grannis isn’t a favorite with an important EnCon constituency, people who like to hunt and fish. So the Senate is likely to let the nomination sit there for a while, although in the end most people think he will be confirmed. In the meantime, EnCon has no leader. One official said no new initiatives are likely to be launched until Grannis or someone else is named commissioner.

I’m beginning to think that the best way to deal with state lawmakers clueless about upstate – and I do mean clueless – is for the governor to stipulate in his budget talks that as a condition for downstaters getting their much-loved pork money, they would have to spend at least two weekends a year in a foreign land, which for them would be identified as upstate between Albany and Buffalo. They would get a bonus if they spend one of those weekends in Utica. I would prefer if they stayed with host families, though they might be difficult to find. The idea is to introduce these decision-makers to a part of the state they govern but have never seen other than through a car’s windshield. They’ve got to get out, meet the people, travel the back roads, taste the local fare. Some would acquire, along with knowledge and appreciation, an empathy for upstate’s problems. They would return to Albany changed and chastened. All right, let’s not go overboard. No lawmaker has ever returned to Albany changed and chastened. That only happens to lawmakers who don’t return to Albany.

Bruno upended tradition by naming a Democrat, Carl Kruger of Brooklyn, to be a committee chairman. Never mind that Kruger doesn’t have a background in Social Services, his new assignment.

It’s the first time that a legislator in the political minority was named to head a legislative committee.

The move comes after lots of scuttlebutt about the Dems trying to woo some Senate Republicans to switch parties (GOP holds a 33-29 advantage). Kruger swears he’s loyal to the Dems, that he won’t vote with the GOP majority on issues and that there was no promise (read pork-barrel money) for his agreement to serve.

Bruno maintained “this is about governing” and not politics. The Senate Democrat leader, Malcolm Smith, said he saw through that.

“Let’s be clear about this,” Smith said at a news conference with Kruger. “We’re playing a little chess game here. (Bruno) made a move … We’ll make our move as well.”

This is nothing against County Executive Maggie Brooks, as she is basically following a trail cut long ago, but there’s no way to see her State of the County address on Monday as anything other than a campaign ad. The thing skipped the bad news, put a party dress on the good, such as it is, and made nice with the kind of voters she hopes will return her to office in November. She said she wanted to accentuate the positive. OK, but why was this year’s accent so different from last year’s, when she rightly dwelt on the structural deficit, the need for community solutions? The clearest difference is her political status – this time, she’s only a few months from a campaign from a second term. Place Monday’s speech next to her furious stand on library access to Internet pornography and you have a candidate out of the gate and into the first turn.

Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks visited with the Editorial Board this morning for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. It was , overall, a good meeting.She didn’t spend a lot of time rehashing last night’s State of the County Speech. After her quick synopsis, I asked her about the most pressing issue confronting county government, in our opinion— it’s huge $100 million budget deficit over the next two years.

To her credit, Brooks didn’t try to dodge a response. She even went so far as to admit that the deficit represents a budget crisis.We disagreed, however, with her contention that last night’s speech wasn’t the place to talk about the budget deficit. I reminded her that last year she spent considerable time in her State of the County speech talking about her “community solution” for the county’s projected budget shortfall.That cleared up, Brooks proceeded to state unequivocably that she stands behind her proposal from last year– using county tax dollars to pay rising Medicaid costs and increasing the county’s sales tax. Nevermind that key state lawmakers, who must approve the sales tax hike, have flatly said “no. Anyway, we’ll be chiming in with our view on this situation in an editorial tomorrow.

But it’s worth noting again that Brooks didn’t try to elude us, as her precedessor did on a regularly basis. She came in, took questions, and explained her position. That’s what dialogue is all about.Too many politicians seem to think that they don’t have to answer to anyone. And when they do, their answers are so evasive they aren’t worth even writing down.

Hold on, Senate Democrats. You may not be as close to taking the majority away from Republicans as you think. There are now 33 Republicans in the Senate and 29 Democrats, and the common wisdom has been if the Dems grab two more seats, since Democratic Lieutenant Gov. David Paterson would break ties in favor of his parties, they would control the chamber. Alas, it’s not that simple, according to a law professor who was once counsel to then-Lt. Gov. Mario Cuomo. “David Paterson is no Dick Cheney,” Bennett Liebman said in a recent op-ed column in the Albany Times Union. “The state constitution gives the lieutenant governor no say on legislation.” Liebman says that while the lieutanant governor can break a tie on procedural matters, like who should be the majority leader, he or she can’t, for example, break a tie on a bill that funds the Senate. Only “elected members of each branch” can vote on bills. Bottom line: the Democrats need three more seats to get full control. So even if Joe Robach decided to go back to his political roots, the Democrats will still have to somehow gain two more seats. Otherwise, the long Republican domination of the Senate (they have had control every year but one since 1938) will continue.

County Executive Maggie Brooks’ State of the State Speech is tonight, but don’t expect us to weigh in with an editorial in tomorrow morning’s editions.Because Brooks is coming to meet with us Tuesday morning, we decided to wait until we could get our questions answered. She’s bringing at least three aides. With that contingent, we surely should get the answers we need.As we pointed out in today’s editorial, the big question is how does she plan to close a $100 million budget shortfall over the next two years?And judging from some of the chatter that accompanied our editorial, we’re not the only ones wanting an answer.See our editorial on Wednesday. Also we’re taping the session so you can hear directly from Brooks (unedited) some of her responses.

James Lawrence has, for the past 14 years as Editorial Page editor, been responsible for producing more than 5,100 daily Editorial and Speaking Out pages. He started his journalism career in Cleveland shortly after graduating from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Along the way, he has had career stops in Denver, Orlando, Fla., and White Plains. But unquestionably, he says, some of his most rewarding years as a journalist have been here in Rochester, being a part of positive change. That change has included reforms that followed an aggressive “Challenging Albany” campaign, greater public awareness and pushback against the coarsening of our culture, and strides being made to make this region a destination community.

Jane Sutter became deputy editorial page editor in June 2009. She also has served as managing editor and general manager/custom content at the Democrat and Chronicle. She writes editorials on many topics, with a focus on health and education, helps plan and edit copy on the Editorial and Speaking Out pages, oversees the Board of Contributors and assists Editorial Page editor James Lawrence in managing the department. She has worked as a reporter or editor for newspapers in Iowa, Illinois, Florida, South Carolina and Elmira, where she was executive editor of the Star-Gazette. She recently received her master’s degree in media management from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them.

Brian Tumulty has worked in the Gannett Washington Bureau since 1992, first as a national business writer and then as a regional reporter for newspapers in New York, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. A native of the New York City borough of Queens, he attended high school on Long Island and college in the Bronx. He has four children and one granddaughter.